TSWatcher

TSWatcher is a multi-RF channel monitoring application included with
TSReader Professional. It tunes through multiple muxes, detects
errors and generates a report and can email these reports to
technicians for error resolution.

It is designed for use on systems using DVB-C or SCTE QAM standards
for cable or DVB-T/T2 and 8VSB for off-air television. It can also
be used for monitoring other network types such as UDP/RTP streams,
DVB-S/S2 networks but we anticipate most people would use it for
off-air and cable. Our testing has been done using Silicon Dust HDHomeRun
tuners which connect to the transport streams to the monitoring
computer via Ethernet.

TSWatcher works by having a list of TSReader tuning commands and a
list of TSReader Professional profiles each pointing at a separate
tuner. The more tuners available, the quicker TSWatcher can loop
through the RF channels and analyze the results.

Alarms can be switched between two different levels or disabled.
Typically, the first three alarms shown above are level one alarms
and will generate error emails since they're indicative of serious
permanent problems. The remainder are typically level two errors and
need to generate a certain number of alarms within a certain period
of time to trigger an error email.

Alarm values such as black pixel percentage and video data rates can
all be changed. The values shown in the list above are the default
values.

Configuring TSWatcher

TSWatcher needs to be configured before it can be used. There are
four different configuration areas: Commands, Profiles, Alarms &
Email.

Commands:

These are the TSReader command-lines that tell it how to tune each
mux. The easiest way to set these up are to import from TSReader's
mux lists.

DVB-C

Tune TSReader to one of the muxes and let the
Network Table (NIT) load. Then right-click the root of the
NIT and choose Export. This will make a comma-separated file
of all the muxes indexed in the NIT. Quit TSReader, and then
click the "Import" button in TSWatcher and then choose
DVB-C.

SCTE QAM

Launch TSReader and hit the Scan button on
the tuner dialog. This will make TSReader scan each of the
QAM channels and generate a list of the active muxes. Quit
TSReader and then click the "Import" button in TSWatcher and
then choose QAM.

DVB-T/T2

Launch TSReader and select the appropriate
geographical area and click the Scan button. This will scan
through all the different frequencies and bandwidths and
will eventually generate a DVBT.lst file in the TSReader
folder. Close TSReader and then click the Setup button in
TSWatcher's main window and click Import and choose DVB-T.
Although exporting the NIT would be possible in DVB-T
networks, some DVB-T2 network tables do not contain the
frequency and therefore would be missing.

8VSB

Start TSReader and hit the Scan button on the
tuner dialog. This will make TSReader scan each of the
broadcast channels and generate a list of the active muxes
in the ATSC.lst file. Quit TSReader and then click the
"Import" button in TSWatcher and then choose 8VSB

Profiles:

These are the TSReader Professional profiles that are used to loop
through the muxes. Each profile needs to be associated with a
separate tuner. In the case of HDHomeRun tuners, the command-lines
in the TSReader profile browser should contain the tuner's unique
address and tuner number. For example:

The "Investigate Profile" is a spare tuner that's not used for
looping through the muxes but causes TSReader Professional to launch
when a particular mux is double-clicked in TSWatcher.

Alarms:

Each error condition can have one of three alarm levels: Off, One
and Two. As alarms on a certain level occur, they are counted and
when above a certain level, will trigger an email. Alarms reset
after a selected period of time. Experimentation will show the best
value for these - for example the reset time should be around the
same as three or four scanning loops.

Normally scrambled elementary streams would generate an error - this
alarm is disabled in the configuration shown above because our
testing was done on a North American public cable system which has
most channels encrypted.The same applies for DVB tables since these
are not carried on cable systems here.

Email:

These are the details required to send an email when an alarm email
is triggered. Most SMTP servers requiring authentication use port
587 and this can be specified with a colon after the server name.
For example: mail.coolstf.com:587. Please note that in the
sample image above, the credentials and server name have been
removed to protect our privacy.

Once all the details have been entered, the configuration can be
tested by hitting the "Send Test" button which should result in an
email being sent.

Running TSWatcher

Once TSWatcher has been configured its scanning can be started with
the "Start" button. Each mux will be shown in a gray box first -
this indicates the mux hasn't been investigated yet. As each mux is
scanned, the box becomes white and after the results of the scan
have been processed the box will be shown as red should that mux
generate alarm emails and green if the mux is hasn't generated
alarms.

The numbers shown inside a box are:

F: - the total number of failures seen when scanning

L1: - the number of level one alarms currently active

L2: - the number of level two alarms currently active

Double-clicking a mux box will show a dialog with all the alarms
generated while TSWatcher is running. Right-clicking a mux will also
allow you to launch TSReader on that mux (using the "Investigate
Profile") and remove all alarms for that mux.